Effects of ankle dorsiflexion on range and reliability of straight leg raising

The effect of dorsiflexion was investigated on range of passive straight leg raising (SLR) and on inter-rater reliability with 35 patients reporting unilateral lumbar pain with or without ipsilateral leg symptoms. Ranges of SLR and SLR with dorsiflexion (SLR/DF) to onset of lumbar or leg symptoms (P1) were independently measured using a gravity goniometer by pairs of different physiotherapists at two clinics. Dorsiflexion significantly reduced SLR range by a mean of 9 degrees across both samples. Similar high inter-rater reliability was found for SLR and SLR/DF in both pairs of physiotherapists. These data show that SLR and SLR/DF are reliable procedures when measured to P1 in the clinical environment and support previous findings that dorsiflexion reduces range of SLR.